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I'm sorry, I am really lost here, where exactly did you get those numbers in the first paragraph? 74 points in 16 games? Where is that coming from? Mario scored at least a point in the first 28 games he played in the 1995-'96 season (it wasn't a points streak because he missed a couple of games here and there). Actually, Mario had a mere 7 games where he didn't register a point in the 1995-'96 season. If that isn't dominance I'd hate to see "real" dominance.

2 x 7 =14
4 x 5 =20
10 x 4 =40

I already alluded to Mario having better scoring consistency in a couple of posts ago so that's in favor of him.

At the end of the day Mario has 3 things in his favour in 96

1) by far the top PP player in the league
2) was the dominant point getter in the league but it's less than the actual raw gap due to these 16 games above, some of which is made up by
3) His consistency which was extremely high that year

I just personally don't think it's enough to overcome what type of player and year Feds had in 96

As a side not in the 13 games that Mario scored 3 points he was exactly a plus 4 over those 13 games, his 16 games with 4 points or more he is a plus 26.

The 2nd number is to be expected but the 1st really isn't IMO and sheds light to what I have been arguing in this thread.

So the reality here is that you have no response to Mario's huge advantage and that alot of that advantage is piling up points in those 16 games and that the huge points advantage has no bearing outside of those 16 games?

Dude, the whole point you're trying to make is that you don't consider Mario's points integral to the Pens winning games.
That's fine, just show us where Fedorov didn't "pad" his stats in some games as well and show us how Fedorov preventing a goal in games where Detroit won by 3 or more is any different?
How is Fedorov getting 4 points and preventing another goal any different in a 6-0 Detroit win than Mario getting 5 points in a 6-1 win?
Seriously...please.

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Sorry but I gave some context to your assertion, either I've got a point or not, your lack of response indicates that there is little or no counterpoint.

Don't make me laugh.
The only "context" you gave was a one sided one. Namely that Mario "padded" his stats while assuming each and every point garnered or goal prevented by Fedorov was absolutely needed for Detroit to win.
This "context" of yours is a joke!

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Like I said I can see where guys take Mario over feds but it's a lot like taking Bobby Clarke over Espostio in the early 7o0's and I like my hockey players as complete as possible and your more likely to win games with complete players rather than more 1 dimensional ones, even if Mario's huge dimension in 96 was that PP prowess.

Complete as possible?
How can you seriously make such a claim when still, to this day, you rank Lidstrom not only over Bourque but also over Orr?
Both of them were more "complete" players than Lidstrom.
So you'll have to excuse me if I snicker just a bit at this claim of yours heh

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You brought up Sid in 11, why the 06 reference now? that's neither here or there as he's not part part of the thread but come on really?

Heh, the point was that scoring today is not all that far behind what it was in the mid-late 90's.
Even using Adjusted points, Mario's 95/96 season is still valued at 156 points in 70 games.
So again, you'll have to excuse me if I continue snicker at this statement of yours...

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As for Sid's 10/11 season we can break that down in the top centers project and it won't hurt him as much as Mario in 96 for 2 main reasons. 1, in a lower scoring league points and goals matter more.( Sid has 2- 4 point games and only 7 3 point games and points in 35 of 41 GP overall).

I already alluded to Mario having better scoring consistency in a couple of posts ago so that's in favor of him.

At the end of the day Mario has 3 things in his favour in 96

1) by far the top PP player in the league
2) was the dominant point getter in the league but it's less than the actual raw gap due to these 16 games above, some of which is made up by
3) His consistency which was extremely high that year

I just personally don't think it's enough to overcome what type of player and year Feds had in 96

As a side not in the 13 games that Mario scored 3 points he was exactly a plus 4 over those 13 games, his 16 games with 4 points or more he is a plus 26.

The 2nd number is to be expected but the 1st really isn't IMO and sheds light to what I have been arguing in this thread.

Alright, so? What you are losing in this whole thing is that despite scoring 7 points in 2 different games that he was playing against NHL caliber competition either way. Just like everyone else. 4 times he had a 5 point game. Alright. 10 times he had a 4 point game. The Pens were 20th out of 26 teams in goals against that year. You don't think those 4 point games made the difference? Mario's dominance could have been the difference between a 6-4 win and a 4-3 loss. I'll give you an example, the best game he may have ever had was the New Year's Eve game in 1988 where he had 5 goals in 5 different ways. The last one was in an empty net. I believe the final score was 8-6 or something like that. Take away Mario's dominance and what are you left with? Probably a 6-4 loss.

Where exactly does scoring goals at will do anything BUT help your team win? Mario had 8 game winning goals that year. Not bad, but Claude Lemieux had 10 with a 39 goal season. Do we even need to ask who is more important and integral to winning between the two?

Do you know how many game winning goals Mario had in the 1991 postseason? 0. That's right, 0. He had 5 in 1992. But 0 in 1991. Does that mean anything? Well, when you scord 18 goals and 44 points during that run it's hard to imagine those points not translating into a ton of victories that your team wouldn't have had without you. Similar to 1995-'96. Do you think his 161 points didn't contribute to several wins somewhere along the way?

Well, to be fair, Mario missed 12 games that season. With Mario, they were W44/L24/T2. Without him they were W5/L5/T2. A pretty big difference.

Seemed like they scored less, crossed their fingers and played a bit tighter defensive Hockey while he was away as well. His absence definitely affected how they played.

We would have to look if winning percentage going down on second game in 2 nights is a normal thing and the no mario their sample size is small, change just a game and the 5-5 become and excellent 6-4 win/loss ratio.

Also probably that without mario their power play was lost a bit, worst that when Mario is just never their and they are use to score without him.

We would have to look if winning percentage going down on second game in 2 nights is a normal thing and the no mario their sample size is small, change just a game and the 5-5 become and excellent 6-4 win/loss ratio.

Also probably that without mario their power play was lost a bit, worst that when Mario is just never their and they are use to score without him.

Well, I don't really get it.

Ill go by what I saw that season. Mario was dominant as usual, and a clear head an shoulders above Feds. or Jagr for that matter since that is what the thread is about. In the games Mario Missed that I caught, it did not look like the same team.

People can look at "numbers" regarding Feds goals for/Against all they want. The fact of the matter is, his beautiful numbers were largely due to his team as well as his personal skill.

As I said before, There was a reason Osgood was runner up for the vezina, and Yzerman was also a finalist for the Selke, and why 3 Detroit defensemen were neck and neck together in contention for a Norris spot.

Enough people have already pointed out that Mario was out there with the lesser teammates at ES, while opposing coaches still were throwing everything at shutting him down, letting Jagr and Francis have a lot of extra space.

Using the eye test can be really really deceptive and it is usualy a bad idea, when sample size is big enough number should translate dominance. Our eye test will see every goal for with Mario on the ice but not all the goal against.

Does Mario was better than Lindros, Fed, Jagr, Sakic, etc... at even strenght ?

How much of Mario dominance on the powerplay, even strength were giving is team more win during the regular season ?

Impossible to know for sure, but the pens were winning at about the same rate without Mario the season before, so maybe that the pens winning was more due to Jagr than Mario ?

The pens were not a good team in 96-75 with Jagr missing game ? Maybe we could look at the 96-97 penguins with and without Jagr records to have an idea ?

Ill go by what I saw that season. Mario was dominant as usual, and a clear head an shoulders above Feds. or Jagr for that matter since that is what the thread is about. In the games Mario Missed that I caught, it did not look like the same team.

People can look at "numbers" regarding Feds goals for/Against all they want. The fact of the matter is, his beautiful numbers were largely due to his team as well as his personal skill.

With regards to adding Fedorov into this discussion:

Even despite the ES numbers disadvantage, Mario is clearly the superior player to Jagr. Fedorov IMHO was the best forward after Mario that season (followed very closely by Jagr). After that there's tight group including Yzerman, Sakic, Forsberg, Lindros, and then a step down to Francis, Messier, Kariya, Selanne, etc.

As far as Pittsburgh's drop in performance; a big part of that can be attributed to a worse season by Francis. Yes, statistically he was better offensively. But he had a worse season at even strength (similar raw ES numbers per-game despite Jagr's massive increase and the reduced strength of oppostion) and he played with Lemieux and Jagr on the PP, which is what floated his PP higher than the previous season. Had Lemieux not returned (and Francis/Jagr been on the first line), I would imagine he'd have been closer to 85-90 points overall (which he would do the next year and the year after).

What cracks me up is people acting like power play goals somehow don't count on the scoreboard

Don't get me wrong here, I do in fact value even strength points over PP points.
If you gave me the choice between 100 point players where one has 60ES and 40 PP/SH vs a player with 40ES and 60PP/SH, I would lean towards that first player.

Easy recent example is Karlsson vs Subban. Now, while I am a huge Subban fan, his almost a PpG scoring in this past shortened season, it was mostly on the PP.
Karlsson is much better offensively at ES and I have no issue saying that Karlsson is the more talented offensive D-man.

Best example is Bourque vs MacInnis. Bourque is clearly the better overall offensive D-man out of the two.

One always has to remember that there are ways to limit PP goals against. Namely, being more disciplined and staying out of the box.

That said, we are certainly not talking about an even split or trade off here between Feds and Mario.
We're talking about a player with GP-70 ES-73 PP/SH-88 vs GP-78 ES-65 PP/SH-42

Don't get me wrong here, I do in fact value even strength points over PP points.
If you gave me the choice between 100 point players where one has 60ES and 40 PP/SH vs a player with 40ES and 60PP/SH, I would lean towards that first player.

Easy recent example is Karlsson vs Subban. Now, while I am a huge Subban fan, his almost a PpG scoring in this past shortened season, it was mostly on the PP.
Karlsson is much better offensively at ES and I have no issue saying that Karlsson is the more talented offensive D-man.

Best example is Bourque vs MacInnis. Bourque is clearly the better overall offensive D-man out of the two.

One always has to remember that there are ways to limit PP goals against. Namely, being more disciplined and staying out of the box.

That said, we are certainly not talking about an even split or trade off here between Feds and Mario.
We're talking about a player with GP-70 ES-73 PP/SH-88 vs GP-78 ES-65 PP/SH-42

And that may well be so, but you can't simply blow off power play goals like they don't exist. YOU don't do that, but it certainly seems that some on here do.

Nobody never do that (strawman argument).

the original post was about Mario/Jagr at even strenght, that why even strenght performance is discuted.

the cost of opportunity of a player taking power play minute is bigger and he need a bigger performance to be better than is replacement, it is only that about power play or even strenght offensive production.

the original post was about Mario/Jagr at even strenght, that why even strenght performance is discuted.

the cost of opportunity of a player taking power play minute is bigger and he need a bigger performance to be better than is replacement, it is only that about power play or even strenght offensive production.

This post makes absolutely no sense. The original post asked if Jagr was better than Lemieux that year since Jagr outscored Lemieux at even strength. My point is that power play scoring counts just as much on the scoreboard as even strength scoring so the bottom-line is that ultimately Lemieux outscored Jagr so it doesn't make any real difference in the grand scheme of things when those goals occurred.

And that may well be so, but you can't simply blow off power play goals like they don't exist. YOU don't do that, but it certainly seems that some on here do.

One thing people almost never factor in is PPO. Power play opportunities.

A great example is the 1988-89 season. LA was basically average in PPO, Detroit was significantly UNDER the league average, and Pittsburgh was WAY above the league average. If you assume PPO to be the same every game (as Lemieux, Gretzky, and Yzerman all played different amounts of GP), and project the different players to the league average, then Gretzky and Yzerman project to be only one PP point apart. Lemieux still has about a 10-12 point PPP lead, but it's nothing like his 26-PPP lead over Gretzky or his 33-PPP lead over Yzerman with the actual PPO.

EDIT: this situation is why you might see a "bad team scorer" on a team with a few decent players and a couple really good ones. Because those eally good players will soak up PP time, and the more skilled players are (generally) good enough to be able to draw more penalties than they take, and hopefully enough to get a significant amount of PPO. Based on that metric it's kind of surprising to see Stamkos/St.Louis at the top of the scoring charts; Tampa was 15th in PPO. But (in total PPTOI) Stamkos himself was 9th, and St. Louis was 16th. Which makes up for the lack of separate opportunities.

This post makes absolutely no sense. The original post asked if Jagr was better than Lemieux that year since Jagr outscored Lemieux at even strength. My point is that power play scoring counts just as much on the scoreboard as even strength scoring so the bottom-line is that ultimately Lemieux outscored Jagr so it doesn't make any real difference in the grand scheme of things when those goals occurred.

Sure and preventing a goal is the same on the scoreboard than scoring one. But the goaltender preventing 26 goal during at night does not have the same value than a 3 goal scorer during that night.

Because value only occur where a player score a goal than a average player would not have scored or prevent a goal than average player will not have prevented.

Look at power play production the same way, how many power play goal your team would have score if your replacement will have played (just thing, for each goal scored 10-20 second of your power play 15% of the time your team will have scored anyway during the next 100 seconds.

You have to beat that to have an actual net goal production added to the team, and value. Mario Lemieux did, probably the most of all nhler of all time.

Now does the Lemieux production over Jagr make up for the fact that he was not as good on even strenght (if that part is true) could be available to us via number.

Sure and preventing a goal is the same on the scoreboard than scoring one. But the goaltender preventing 26 goal during at night does not have the same value than a 3 goal scorer during that night.

Because value only occur where a player score a goal than a average player would not have scored or prevent a goal than average player will not have prevented.

Look at power play production the same way, how many power play goal your team would have score if your replacement will have played (just thing, for each goal scored 10-20 second of your power play 15% of the time your team will have scored anyway during the next 100 seconds.

You have to beat that to have an actual net goal production added to the team, and value. Mario Lemieux did, probably the most of all nhler of all time.

Now does the Lemieux production over Jagr make up for the fact that he was not as good on even strenght (if that part is true) could be available to us via number.

I suppose you will also want to ignore the fact that Francis centered Jagr that year and was a close runner up for the Selke(Based on two way play) and that the best transition game defenseman on the team was out when they were instead of with Lemieux. Along with the fact that Lemieux was making this scoring happen with, well, the lesser linemates.

I suppose you will also want to ignore the fact that Francis centered Jagr that year and was a close runner up for the Selke(Based on two way play) and that the best transition game defenseman on the team was out when they were instead of with Lemieux. Along with the fact that Lemieux was making this scoring happen with, well, the lesser linemates.

Jagr was not better at ES. His line was

This could be very true, do we have pens winning percentage without jagr in 96-97 ?

Because the thing is, those pens did not won that much of game that year when compared to the 94-95 pens or the 95-96 flyers.

Making scoring happen old no value at all at winning hockey game, the only only thing that matter is scoring more than your opponent, by itself scoring or preventing goal indicate nothing about the added value at winning an hockey game. Making more scoring that your adversary happenning is the only metric that we should look at if we could.

One thing people almost never factor in is PPO. Power play opportunities.

A great example is the 1988-89 season. LA was basically average in PPO, Detroit was significantly UNDER the league average, and Pittsburgh was WAY above the league average. If you assume PPO to be the same every game (as Lemieux, Gretzky, and Yzerman all played different amounts of GP), and project the different players to the league average, then Gretzky and Yzerman project to be only one PP point apart. Lemieux still has about a 10-12 point PPP lead, but it's nothing like his 26-PPP lead over Gretzky or his 33-PPP lead over Yzerman with the actual PPO.

EDIT: this situation is why you might see a "bad team scorer" on a team with a few decent players and a couple really good ones. Because those eally good players will soak up PP time, and the more skilled players are (generally) good enough to be able to draw more penalties than they take, and hopefully enough to get a significant amount of PPO. Based on that metric it's kind of surprising to see Stamkos/St.Louis at the top of the scoring charts; Tampa was 15th in PPO. But (in total PPTOI) Stamkos himself was 9th, and St. Louis was 16th. Which makes up for the lack of separate opportunities.

Here's the thing though...Mario still only played 70 games in 95/96. So while his team may have had the most PP opportunities that season, he didn't and he still blew everyone else away.

Here's the thing though...Mario still only played 70 games in 95/96. So while his team may have had the most PP opportunities that season, he didn't and he still blew everyone else away.

Did I not say above that I considered him the best forward?

I was specifically stating that if you are separating ES and PP, it is helpful to look at PPO before saying "well, this guy had 80 PP points and this guy had 40."

Because, as was noted earlier, the opposing players' PP production can be shut down simply by not taking penalties. So accounting for massive discrepancies in PP chances is certainly important if you're going to make enough of an effort to separate the stats by situation.

Maybe just badluck ? Maybe having a game that evolve more on Mario and lost a bit (on the powerplay) when is not there for 12 game that would have been better for them on a no mario world.

95-96 not having a better win% with the season than Francis-Jagr had, Zubov added, 100 points Nedved and 160 Mario, why those points did not translate into more win ?

Maybe just luck and smaller sample size in the lock-out season, or maybe the 160 points Mario do not translate in winning hockey game as much as we would think.

It could just be bad luck or maybe just more evidence that Mario's dominance offensively really doesn't automatically translate into more wins.

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Originally Posted by Dark Shadows

Well, to be fair, Mario missed 12 games that season. With Mario, they were W44/L24/T2. Without him they were W5/L5/T2. A pretty big difference.

Seemed like they scored less, crossed their fingers and played a bit tighter defensive Hockey while he was away as well. His absence definitely affected how they played.

It seems like a pretty big difference but 11 of those 12 games were road games and many were also the 2nd game in 2 nights. A 5-5-2 record given those circumstances is actually really good to excellent.

They definitely scored less PP goals since Mario was on ice for 102 of the Pens 109 PP goals that year, so they only scored 7 PP goals in those games.

And we need to take account of the fact that stars players like Mario could influence the number of powerplay opportunity.

IMO, drawing a penalty could have a value of around 0.2 points when evaluating a player

It's true that better players are more likely to cause a call in your favor in general.

So why did Pittsburgh have almost 500 and LA have just under 400, with a league average of 403, in 1988-89? LA had Nicholls, Robitaille, Taylor, Duchesne. Pittsburgh had Rob Brown, Dan Quinn, and Paul Coffey.

Did Lemieux create that difference all on his own? If so, it really dispels any suggestion that Gretzky should have gotten the Hart.